How story of how science fiction predicted modern high-tech developments in chemistry
Real-world technology is often foretold by science fiction. In 1927, characters in the film Metropolis made video calls to each other. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hung flat-screen colour monitors on the walls of the Enterprise decades before we did the same in our living rooms. The most...
How do fireworks work? We ask a pyrotechnics chemist
How do fireworks work? A pyrotechnics chemist explains the science behind the brilliant colors and sounds For many people around the world, the very first moments of the new year will be filled with the sounds and colorful light shows of fireworks. From loud bangs to long whistles, bright...
How to win a Nobel prize – researchers who defy specialization
It's Nobel prize season. In the next few weeks will the Scandinavian prize will be awarded for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The prizes are famously part of a chemist, engineer, and industrialist Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, and awarded to "those who, during the...
Engineering Podcasts – PII Podcast
'PII Podcast' is the official podcast of Process Industry Informer. A series sees host Dave Howell discuses the latest technologies and future insights throughout the manufacturing process industries. Process Industry Informer is an independent publisher, originally launched in 1994 as Process Products, and is on a mission to...
Geometrically baffling ‘quasicrystals’ found in the debris of the first-ever nuclear blast
Nuclear detonations unleash an astonishing amount of destructive force. But the extreme pressure and temperature that they generate also makes nuclear blasts a cauldron of chemical creation, capable of delivering new and surprising scientific discoveries. In the 1950s, for instance, scientists examining debris from US hydrogen bomb tests...
Is this the first ever living, programmable organism?
Not bot, not beast: scientists create first ever living, programmable organism A remarkable combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and biology has produced the world’s first “living robots”. This week, a research team of roboticists and scientists published their recipe for making a new lifeform called xenobots from stem...